“Why were you spying on American teenagers?”
“I wondered that too. Every time my CO left me alone after that, I dug into another machine. The further I went, the more I looked, the more I realized I wasn’t fighting the war I signed up for.
“This was some serious CIA shit. We were spying on civilians. The kind of people no one realizes are a threat to national security. Some of it was monitoring for treason-level shit, like ensuring no one was selling our secrets. Most of it was more benign—ensuring there was no price fixing on contract bids. Things along those lines.”
She didn’t know what to say. It was so Tom Clancy, but digital with a heavy side of invasion of privacy. “How does knowing someone’s teenager got drunk on Friday night tell you if they’re selling out their country?”
“No one is tight-lipped every hour of every day. Especially not the people who think they’re too smart to get caught. Some senior VP for a military contractor finds a second source of income from a country who may not be so fond of us, or he takes a bribe during contract negotiation—anything like that. He keeps his mouth shut in public, but he usually tells his wife. Even if he doesn’t, suddenly the family has things they didn’t before. The kids are going to expensive private schools, or they’re bragging to their friends about the new swimming pool, or the wife has a new car. A new wardrobe.”
That made a scary amount of sense. “So you looked for anomalies.”
“Ididn’t, but I made it possible for someone else to.” He shook his head, doubt and anger hiding behind his gaze. “As I dug some more, I realized she—my new commanding officer—was on location with me, to try to make my job change to the CIA official. Which made sense, when I thought about it. There was absolutely no reason for us to be working in the same room otherwise.”
What could Riley say to that?
He stared back, a sad smile on his face. “So I confronted her. She didn’t deny any of it. Instead, she offered me a job. The kind of work we’d been doing, but more of it, and good money on top of that. They were impressed I’d scraped so much without getting caught. Basically, I’d passed their test.”
“So when you say you turned down the job for ethical reasons...” Holy shit.
“Spying on armies and rebellions and organized groups trying to take down governments is different than peering into private lives because they might be selling government secrets—but probably aren’t. We weren’t working off a list of probable suspects. We watchedeveryonewho had any connection to anything.”
Riley couldn’t hide her wince.
“Besides. Part of me still needs to prove...”
She waited for a moment. “What?” she asked when he didn’t finish his sentence.
“Nothing.” The single word was soft in the night. “Stupid shit.”
A gust tore through the night, making her pull in tighter on herself. She saw the guilt and pain in his expression. Heard the hesitation in his words. He wasn’t telling her everything, and whatever he held back devoured him. “Like what?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter.” He drummed his fingers on his legs.
She felt the wall cropping up between them again. “Okay. It doesn’t have to.”
“I didn’t mean to ruin your night with this.” He stopped moving his fingers and clenched his jaw.
She expected some things to be tough for him to talk about, and this ate at him. “You didn’t. I promise. I’m always here; that hasn’t changed.”
He forced out a breath through clenched teeth. “We should head home. You have to work in the morning.”
“We can stay out here a little longer.” She wanted to help him sort through this. As much as she’d tried to ignore it up to now, he wasn’t the Zane who left six years ago. He was haunted by choices she couldn’t fathom having to make, and she wanted to help him through it.
“And do what? Not talk? I’m sorry, Riley. I can’t. Not tonight.”
The shrug-off hurt more than she thought possible, gnawing inside and chipping away at her core. She wouldn’t push him if he wasn’t ready to talk, though. The only solution was for her to be available when that happened, and hope he understood she was listening without judgement.
“It’s okay.” It wasn’t, but what else was she supposed to say? This wasn’t about her. Zane needed to heal. “I understand.”